I am an Air Force brat, a self-taught artist, and a part-time mom these days. I work out my artistic demons by making stuff and trying to find the humor when things go wrong. I have a spouse, two grown kids and cats that barf and bring horrible things into the house, so things do go wrong. My youngest is in college and only home during breaks, so I'm almost an empty nester, alone more than not and trying to figure out this new stage of life. Time to make a mess.

December 23, 2012

My family and I continue to slog through trying to get our new house in order when we're all gone so many hours of the day. It has finally dawned on me how life is going to change in 2014, both as a mom and an artist.

Along with a few holiday greeting cards for the few people that have our new address, my son has been receiving notices from colleges about items he still needs to turn in to complete his application file. It's hit me. He's leaving. Now I'm trying to type with vision blurred by tears.

Yesterday I was going through the last box to unpack in the master bedroom. I found one of my old journals and flipped through a few pages. This volume was started while I was in my 7th year as an infertility patient, documenting a recent miscarriage (my third), and my 5th and final pregnancy. Much of it was spent in the hospital emergency department or in bed for more than four months, trying to hang on for as long as possible. I read with tears in my eyes that I hoped my child would one day know how very much we wanted him and how so very hard we worked to keep him alive. Now he's applying to colleges. Where did the time go?

So while I am spending up to four hours in the car every day, two of those are spent with him just talking about learning to drive, politics, news, party planning... I've been selfishly focused a lot on how I have NO time to do anything creative, spending my time behind the wheel or in the grocery store or cleaning up cat barf (thank you Tabitha, I'm never bored). Next fall, I will have much more time for making art than I ever have before. Today, I'm not sure how I feel about the impending change. I'll be an artist first, then mom when the kids have time for me. The table is turning. I hope I'm ready.

December 4, 2012

We survived the month-plus in the rental house with all of the parrots screaming in the tree across the street, the constant thunder of big trucks, the ding-a-linging of the train crossing and the parade of university students that made it nearly impossible to back out of my driveway without taking a life. Ugh! It was harder than anticipated.

We moved into the new house earlier than we'd expected, that coming with its own challenges. My poor husband tried taking a couple of days off to help unpack, but the phone rang incessantly from his office and he ended up just working from a cell phone. We've wrestled with cooties, rain, a seriously ill cat (my studio kitty was seriously misdiagnosed by the previous vet, but Tabitha is much better now), house guests (one of which was the most wonderful help with unpacking and more) and every day cut short on both ends due to my having to commute my son to school at varying hours every day. I'm tired, and my "studio" looks like this:

It's dreadful. The movers quite literally dumped the contents of my studio desk into boxes and slapped them shut with a tape gun. In my old studio, I came to realize that I had to get organized so I didn't spend most of every day hunting for one little thing or another, using a rolodex to document the location of every little bit and bobble. I would look up embroidery needles, and the little card would remind me they were in the bottom left drawer of the desk. So much for that rolodex. I found a couple of my art tiles broken, a wire sculpture piece I'd been working on for months smashed flat, and just flat out chaos. I'm trying to make the space work as a studio, but so far I've had little luck and even less time.

My silver lining is that my crazy, chubby psychotic kitty Charlotte is happy, happy, happy with no more trucks, trains, parrots or jackhammers. She is off of her anti-anxiety medicine and appears to be enjoying the stairs, getting exercise like the rest of us, whether we want to or not.

This week is about trying to unpack the last of the boxes, pick paint colours for the first floor of the house, decorate for Christmas and not lose my mind in the process. I think there won't be time for much art for a while, but I can always plot, plan and sketch until I DO find the time.

About Me

I would rather be funny than thin (I am), and I would rather be charitable of heart than beautiful (I am), but wouldn't complain if I were offered the thin and beautiful too! Creativity is something with which I struggle, either because my mind goes a mile and minute and I have a hard time focusing, or because I'm being pulled too many directions and distracted with real life. I blog to help me focus on creativity or just to work out my demons.